While creating their new album 'Become What You Are', indie pop-rock band The Daisycutters unexpectedly opened a new creative chapter in their career.
It's been some 15 years since The Daisycutters released their last album, 'Come Sweet Bullets', and a decade since frontman and vocalist Cameron Wilson had written a song. "I just hadn't done it. I don't know, I just lost the muse or couldn't be bothered. I certainly had ideas," Cameron explains.It was a call from the band's label that jumpstarted the writing process for 'Become What You Are'. Stephen Morris, MADCAP Global Managing Director and long-time champion of the band, rang with a proposition: If he backed a new Daisycutters album, would they write and record it?
"These opportunities don't come around at this point in a band's life," Cameron says. "Then we went and just started writing songs, we started writing from scratch. I had notebooks of things and ideas started forming and then before we knew it, they just started coming out."
'Become What You Are' took more then two years to complete, taking its roots in the throes of lockdown. The first single, 'The Longer We Do This', is also the first song written for the album and a rocking ode to The Daisycutters getting their groove back.
"When we're talking about 'The Longer We Do This The Easier It Will Be', I had that lyric idea in my head for a long time and when we first started doing that song, in the shed for the first hour I remember thinking: 'This doesn't feel right, it doesn't feel natural and it feels awkward,'" Cameron says.
"In the back of my mind I was thinking, 'that's cool, we could spend the rest of our time playing the songs we've already written, that's great too'; we just love playing together and hanging out. Then after an hour something clicked, and things started happening.
"It wasn't written on that night, but we exchanged all the lyrics and arrangements and before we knew it that song was done. Then it started coming from there.
"The way we write nowadays, for each song we write four songs then we trim all the fat down to get the best bits. I don't know how other bands do it but for us it works."
'Become What You Are' marks a significant milestone for The Daisycutters, last year celebrating their 25th anniversary as a band.
As part of the silver jubilee revelry, MADCAP Global produced two documentaries hosted by Brisbane radio legend Costa Zouliou chronicling the band's incredible 25-year journey together.
"Costa's been a good mate of ours for ages. It was good to be able to do it, sit down with all the lads after all this time," Cameron says, "and it was nice to reflect because as we mentioned in those documentaries, as a band we don't often sit around and reflect.
"We normally just move on to other things. There are always war stories around the band room, but we've never done a documentary like that before and it was nice to celebrate the 25 years that way."
'Become What You Are' is out now. The Daisycutters play Vinnies Dive (Gold Coast) 6 April.
